Vivienne Scott gets a kiss from her border collie, after the dog was recovered

Jennifer of Adamant Bulldogs left this piece of good news in the comments section:

The english bulldogs stolen in California were returned.

The owner was able to get several papers and local TV news outlets to report on the theft, she also blanketed Craigslist, Kijiji and other sites with the story. The goal was to make it to hard for anyone to sell or even give away the dogs

Her doorbell rang and when she opened it the dogs were running around in front of her house, the returner was nowhere to be found.

Don’t know if this tactic will help with the Chicago situation, but it is the second time this seems to have worked for bulldog owners on the wet coast, last year it was a puppy in AZ, and the media coverage saw her left in a hotel drop box in good condition

This reminded me of a similar situation which just occurred in Montreal, Quebec. A truck carrying the canine members of an Ottawa Flyball team was stolen from a parking lot outside of a Jack Astor’s Eatery.

Claire Gordon of Manotick was with three other Ottawa residents eating at Jack Astor’s just west of Montreal off the Hwy. 40 when her black 2004 Chevrolet Silverado was stolen at about 3:30 p.m.

Gordon and her friends had spent the day at Ile-des-Soeurs competing in a flyball tournament, said her friend Pat Nadarajah, 49, of Ottawa.

“They went in for dinner and came back out an hour later and the truck had been stolen,” said Nadarajah.

“Whoever took it obviously didn’t know the dogs were in there because they were in the back of the truck,” said Nadarajah, adding the truck had a cap on the back.

There were two Border Collies, Jack Russell Terrier and a Cattle dog in crates.

“I would imagine horror,” Nadarajah said of Gordon’s reaction. “She had parked pretty close to the entrance so she could try and keep an eye on it. When she came out she couldn’t find the truck.”

As in the case Jennifer mentioned, friends and acquaintances of Gordon instantly sprang into action, getting the news out to mailing lists, on line forums, ad sites and the media. All of this unwanted attention paid off – the dogs were found.

The SPCA received a call just after midnight from someone reporting dogs tied to a fence in the Montreal area. They went to investigate and the happy pooches responded to their names when they were called.

“It’s absolutely amazing what overwhelming support we got from the community. We had calls from Missouri, New Brunswick and even Newfoundland,” Scott said. “We put the word out on Facebook and Twitter with their mugshots and people really tried to help. We owe them for all they did.”

Two things leap out from this incidence – the first is to ALWAYS use the power of social media to get the word out about situations like this.

Dog people, for all their faults, will almost always rally around dogs in need, and they have a pretty powerful grapevine. It might not always work, but the added attention this kind of media coverage can bring will certainly help to make theives decide that maybe it just isn’t worth it to keep the dogs after all.

The second lesson comes from Vivienne Scott, owner of one of the missing dogs –

“We shall never leave our dogs in the car ever again. We thought it would be safe, but we’re never going to do that again.”

A good lesson for all of us to remember – things can happen in an instance, and it’s up to us to try to minimize risk. From now on, I’ll be sucking it up and eating drive through take out, inside the car.

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